10 things what we don't want to see in Dungeon Keeper 3

By Haree78 on June 10, 2010 9:28:53 AM from

For some random reason I thought I would make this list after reading in some old threads about how cool it would be if a Dungeon Keeper 3 was made.

Just in case some developer picks it up and they decide to makes some "improvements" here is what we wouldn't want (yes I speak for everyone cause I'm arragant like that):

1) Being able to pick up monsters and put them anywhere

It was in the first and second game and it made the whole premise silly. What was the best way to defend the dungeon? Was it to arrange rooms and traps carefully so heroes would encounter things they didn't want to and not find the treasure/heart?

No it was to pick up every single monster under your command and then drop them on the heroes heads and watch them all die. Pointless. Crap.

2) Rainbow Bright dungeons

The first 2 games were actually really colourful and were a mix of dank dark dungeons and colourful spells. We want the style of the first game, it was a perfect fit for an evil overlord hiding under the ground recruiting monsters to his cause. Do not give us bright blue/orange/green whatever rooms, keep it dark. Related to this, for the love of god don't make it that we are actually the good guys somehow, the good guys are the heroes coming in plate armour and magic imbued weapons, we want to be the evil gits, it's part of the dark humour of the original.

3) RPG elements

Oh my god how many times have I read the features of a game to have RPG elements to the game, esspecially RTS sequels or FPS. Jesus christ I DONT WANT TO PUT POINTS IN TO STRENGTH AND STAMINA in my monsters. I don't want them to have talent trees, fuck off! Wrong game genre and totally missplaced when used anywhere other than an RPG!

4) Multiplatform

Well these days it's unlikely anyone would pick up the license if they weren't going to try make the most money from it. I can live in hope that they would make it all it could be for a PC gamer and not have our game tainted for the console market and all the usual mistakes developers make for them.

5) Majesty 2

Don't make Majesty 2 mistakes. Don't make the whole experience more gamey. Notice how Majesty 1 felt more like a kingdom sim than Majesty 2? Majesty 2 thought that making constant monster spam makes it more fun. In truth it makes it feel less like you are attracting heroes who will wonder the land and do their own thing than you are just hiring body guards who constantly have to defend the kingdom or follow your flags. Rubish.

We don't want to be constantly attacked by heroes, look at the first game non dungeon vs dungeon levels. We rarely got attacked but when we did it was significant. That's what we want to play for.

6) A genre other than Dungeon Keeping

If they had of called Overlord "Dungeon Keeper 3" I would have cried. Don't make this an FPS, a typical RTS or a hack and slash. Just make more of the same. We don't get great games in the same genre as Dungeon Keeper / Majesty anymore, and I'll never know why

7) Single / Multiplayer only

These days games NEED multiplayer, esspeically a new Dungeon Keeper. Even if a gamer mostly plays this genre in Single Player they can still get turned off with single player only because multiplayer says longevity. Plus they will want to encourage friends to get the game and share their love of it with the promise of some 1v1 games or a comp stomp. Also don't skrimp on Single Player, as much as forum users are mostly multiplayer gamers most gamers are Single Player gamers and a game in a Dungeon Keeper universe needs a great level based campaign complete with evil advisor inbetween levels.

8) Forgeting the I in AI

Most gamers are single player gamers. Even multiplayer gamers like me have fun pitching ourselves against AI and have a many player game with the ability to save and without having to beat the ultimate click fest strategy.

Get the AI to be competative without cheats. That extra post support money needs a chunk reserved for AI improvements when you realise how players are gaming the AI.

9) Don't deliver us 85% of the game with 15% payable extra DLC.

Work out your budget and make it so 20% of the budget of developing the game is post release. Give yourselves a chance to shape the game in to what it should be, patch out the bugs and give us a little extra. We are likely to buy a limited edition with a DK3 artbook and extra skins for heroes and monsters but I'm unlikely to pay for 4 more multiplayer maps, I'll just feel robbed and gutted that it divides the players.

10) Don't forget sandbox

Seriously, we pay good money for games. We want to come back after we've completed it and make our own challenges. When kids were given a stick and a hoop they didn't just play one game type over and over with it, they used to play all sorts of things with that stick and hoop, give the game longevity.

+24 Karma | 23 Replies

Some company should start to work on DK3. Seriously....DK was one of the best & most unique games in the history.

A board game version of DK by the name of Dungeon Lords came out last year that was pretty good.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/45315/dungeon-lords

#1 and #6 are definitely the most important, but I could live with the rest. If there happens to be RPG elements I can't see it being a big negative, especially during singleplayer. Talent trees for dungeon masters could have some interesting skills or add some different strategies to multiplayer.

I could easily see being able to declare one of your heroes your champion/avatar and then doing some stuff with him. I wonder if there is a good way to make your own crazy monsters with some dumbed down spore creature creator thing (maybe more Impossible Creatures).

I've seen some games have systems for genetic manipulation. You could pick some monsters and try to combine their best traits or just mutate them with something and hope for the best. Most die or end up worse, but the ones that don't are amazing.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/05/31/dungeon-keeper-world-hmm/

dungeon keeper mmo is being developed appearently. which makes me sad.

Quoting Burningpet,

reply 3

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/05/31/dungeon-keeper-world-hmm/

dungeon keeper mmo is being developed appearently. which makes me sad.

DK MMO? What the?!...yet another "facepalm" moment.

Next they'll make a Dungeon Keeper FPS!

DK MMO? What the?!...yet another "facepalm" moment.

My thoughts exactly. Why is everyone making MMO's these days. Sure, you look at WoW and its millions of subscribers who pay service charges on TOP of monthly fees and you start drooling, but developers shouldn't be blinded to the countless other titles that have been abysmal failures trying to emulate the champ.

Anyways, Dungeon Keeper has one of the strongest followings I've ever seen from a "dead" franchise, and it really exemplifies the difficulty of actually ressurrecting a series. Sadly, when it happens you get garbage like this.

Jesus christ I DONT WANT TO PUT POINTS IN TO STRENGTH AND STAMINA in my monsters. I don't want them to have talent trees, fuck off!

Well, if you have one particular "pet" with such characteristics or dungeon-wide speccing, that's fine, but any further than that would be too far.

8) Forgeting the I in AI

No one ever forgets the "I", they just accidentally make artificial idiots instead.

After recently finding out DK2 works on Win7 64bit just fine I have been loving it. Even to the point of trying to find what game/modding engine I could possibly use to bring about a (mostly) graphical update to the DK series. Still trying to ascertain the strengths of a couple of engines to see if there's any possibility, though it will be a long process being just me.

Sequels lately have been such a letdown for the most part that any more I fear hearing there's one in the pipes for a game I love. If DK MMO is any indication they have already went to the depths of the worst thing that could happen.

Quoting Darvin3,

reply 6

DK MMO? What the?!...yet another "facepalm" moment.

My thoughts exactly. Why is everyone making MMO's these days. Sure, you look at WoW and its millions of subscribers who pay service charges on TOP of monthly fees and you start drooling, but developers shouldn't be blinded to the countless other titles that have been abysmal failures trying to emulate the champ.

THat's what they want. They want to get the 50-60 bucks upfront, throw on 15 dollars a month and then fill up a cash shop plus a long string of pre-planned expansions so they can get gamers to pay well over a couple hundred of dollars for one game. It's just plain greed. Now, I am actually an MMO player, though I don't have one now, so I am not actually opposed to the genre as a whole. Lately though, the MMO arena is filled with single-player games trying to make 15 bucks a month with a very weak multiplayer link, or cash shops with rushed games built on top of them. You should take the "we" out of your list though. It's your list, and i respect your opinion but there are a few of those I don't really care about myself. Like you, I am also primarily a multiplayer gamer so a DK with co-op optino would be awesome, of course, they'd have to invest in quality AI for that... unlike majesty 2. Majesty 2 almost made me weep.

Quoting Darvin3,

reply 6

Well, if you have one particular "pet" with such characteristics or dungeon-wide speccing, that's fine, but any further than that would be too far.

What's the point? How will it add to the fun factor? Name one non RPG or MMORPG where RPG features improved the game? I can only think of Diablo type games and in my mind they tap the same RPG itch in a slightly different format.

If you want something in Dungeon Keeper theme how about a Workshop where trolls would work to make better weapons and armour for your Monsters? How about if you assign a warlock to the workshop that items would be imbued with slight stat increases and rarely a unique magic weapon would be available? How about if you make a library available Warlocks will learn arcane magic but if they spend more time in the Graveyard they start using Necromantic magic?

That's interesting, fits the theme, gives more choice and doesn't change the game to something crap and generic in an attempt to appeal to all.

The last thing I want is to have to keep looking for monsters that have the leveled up symbol so I can assign their leveling stats or whatever.

the surviving dungeon keeper community is here.

http://forum.keeperklan.com/52-KeeperFX

dungeon keeper fan patch ( higher resolutions now supported, + bug fixes + forthcoming improved net code)

http://keeper.lubie.org/

Quoting Haree78,

reply 9

Quoting Darvin3, reply

Um.... Warcraft 3. Also Sins of a Solar Empire

Try evil genius. You can't pick up and drop your people anywhere, there are almost no rpg elements, it's just for the pc, if you play it right you can have almost no people attacking (while if you want to have lots of people attacking at once it's also fairly straightforward to do), it's in a 'dungeon keeping' genre (replace dungeon with evil lair), it's designed for single player (no multiplayer), the AI is decent (not great though), there's no DLC, and the nature of how you build your lair is very sandbox in nature - part-way through the game you basically get to start afresh and build your dungeon evil lair from scratch however you see fit!

The best part of it is the traps though - you get to design fiendishly complex trap systems and watch as the good guys fall into them.

They want to get the 50-60 bucks upfront, throw on 15 dollars a month and then fill up a cash shop plus a long string of pre-planned expansions so they can get gamers to pay well over a couple hundred of dollars for one game.

Sure, that's what they want, but it doesn't mean they're going to get it. For every successful MMO there are perhaps a dozen that land by the wayside because they couldn't hold on to their fan-base. Those monthly fees turn a successful game into a goldmine, but can be self-destructive to anything that isn't a smash hit.

What's the point? How will it add to the fun factor? Name one non RPG or MMORPG where RPG features improved the game?

Warcraft III and Sins of a Solar Empire both let you customize your "hero" units as they gain battle experience, and Civilization IV lets you give custom promotions to your individual units. The feature worked very well in all of those games.

As far as "Dungeon-wide" speccing, this would be little more than a tech tree which you progress through by fighting battles.

Talent speccing your monsters just doesn't make sense in terms of what you are meant to be in the game, I want the monsters to level up and learn new spells themselves. I wouldn't mind if the monsters leveled up to different builds themselves that maybe you can influence based on your dungeon ... The last thing I want is to have to keep looking for monsters that have the leveled up symbol so I can assign their leveling stats or whatever.

Sure, I agree you don't want to be micro-managing every minion. But that's completely different from having one special minion that you customize, or buying an upgrade for all minions of the same type. Neither of these require paying attention to individuals, and are mostly one-time deals rather than something you need to keep doing over and over.

Dungeon keeper had RPG elements from the start. what do you think the number in the middle of those health flowers was?

Awesomeness? ;(

One feature I would pretty much have to insist most kindly on for a DK3 would be different weapon upgrades for the gits. In fact overall 3d models that change gear and change visuals because of it.

Edit: Hmm... an mmorpg from the dk universe? I'd have to see it to believe it? We were never the heroes. Are we bad guys raiding the good guys' bases? Or good guys raiding the bad guys' bases? Or do we stand guard all day as bad guys in the bad guys' dungeons? I don't even understand how they can make DK universe applicable to an MMORPG. It is common fantasy, there's very little unique about it except that you're building a dungeon slowly towards the surface.

Edit2: The links explained it.

On the bright side, it might be a China-only release, meaning we may never see it. On the downside, it's clear no one who cares about the traditional DK franchise has any say in the matter. I think the only hope of salvation for DK fanatics is a spiritual successor that doesn't carry the IP. Which is probably for the best, since many of the original game's features do need to be reworked anyways, and that's easier to do when you aren't strictly speaking a sequel.

EA doing an MMORPG on a franchise already established in the "west"? You must be dreaming if you think it will not see release here.

Meh. I'm glad to see a DK game, even if it stinks. If you aren't interested, don't buy it.

If it's got monthly fees, then no, I won't be considering it. I've firmly rejected that model, and it's unlikely anything would convince me to jump on the bandwagon.

Quoting Darvin3,

reply 13

Hated Warcraft III. The way it went to a Hero centric RTS was terrible as fas I was concerned. Running round killing creeps for XP, battles decided completely by their spells...uuggghh

RPG elements in Sins? I guess you could call it that, although it could not be in a more 'light' fashion.

Haven't played Civ IV.

It's pointless arguing about this really though because they add these RPG features to appeal to gamers who have your taste in games, but it alienates gamers like me. I'm only guessing I'm not the only one of course

I guess the reason I hate the idea is that for me Dungeon Keeper has very much the same appeal as Theme Park/Hospital in a superb setting. Going down any route where you gain more and more control of your monsters would make it a different kind of game. I want to change the flavour of my minions by the environment I build for them, not direct control of their growth.

Quoting Haree78,

reply 19

I miss BullFrog. Theme Hospital was just awesome. Theme Park was pretty great too and when they left, for awhile, Rolleroaster Tycoon picked up the slack. Now there just isn't any good theme park sims that I know of, and Theme Hospital never came back!

Running round killing creeps for XP, battles decided completely by their spells...uuggghh

RPG elements in Sins? I guess you could call it that, although it could not be in a more 'light' fashion.

How is Sins any different from Warcraft III? Both of them are hero units that gain experience as they kill stuff and gain more powerful special abilities. It's true that armies are generally larger in Sins so capital ships can be more easily overwhelmed, but throw an 80-pop T3 army at a Warcraft 3 hero and there's not a lot he can do either. Sins has militia instead of creeps, but it fulfills the same role.

I don't see what you're getting at here. I know a lot of people didn't like Warcraft III in general, but I don't see how you could knock it for being too much like a RPG then spare Sins the same treatment, as the differences in that regard are mostly cosmetic.

Quoting Darvin3,

reply 21

How is Sins any different from Warcraft III? Both of them are hero units that gain experience as they kill stuff and gain more powerful special abilities.

Based on how much people go on about how crap Cap Ships are (well not so much these days) but totally require a fleet to kill anything I think the difference is obvious. Could you win a battle without a Cap ship in Sins? Could you win a battle without a hero against an army with a hero in Warcraft.

"Hero centric" is what I said.

In all honesty I don't remember the exact leveling and RPG features in Warcraft 3, I just remember how playing a game against someone else was a horrible rush to get xp with your hero and whoever had leveled his the most usually was winning. I certainly don't get that feeling in Sins but then I almost exclusively play against AI.

I still believe claiming Sins proves RPG features work in other games is nonsense because it's barely an example of what I'm talking about. And considering how many Warcraft 2 fans were dissapointed with the changes perhaps I'm not alone.

Try Dwarf Fotress, its not nearly as polished as DK2, but it is the same genre, and its free. When I'm in the mood for this type of game its about 50/50 split between DK2 and Dwarf Fotress. Ocassionally I go with Pharoh/Ceasar type games but those don't have that fun quality that DK2 does. Be warned, Dwarf Fotress is more complex than anything else you will ever play, and because it is largely ASCII, you better know what resources are our there to help you learn to play, such as the wiki.

Haree78

I'm the opposite on RPG elemnts, I think they make everything better. Warlords Battlecry was awsome, and I was glad when Blizzard ripped off heroes leveling for Warcraft 3. X-Com was made better because your soldiers stats leveled up. HoMM and Discples were better strategy games because of leveling than without it. I don't think I have more than a few games that lack some form of RPG element that I play these days, even civ and colonization now have RPG elements. As was mentioned Dungeon Keeper had RPG elements, leveling, spells that unlocked based on level etc.

Some of the best parts about strategy game with RPG elements is that the really good ones allow you to play them without even paying attention to those elements. You don't have to level your tanks in Civ, your soldiers in X-Com, etc. You can just play and it is in the background. But you can choose to act to level when you do want to, after something happens to make you notice or care about a unit if you want to. (Like that spearman that defeated the tank!)

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10 things what we don't want to see in Dungeon Keeper 3